A step toward creating an impartial, comprehensive, and searchable national database of people killed during interactions with law enforcement.

Public records tool

Journalists and others who wish to help by making local public records requests and sharing the results with me, choose your state below. You can then select a county or “all,” and the database will produce a mailing list by which records requests can be made.

The idea behind this is that journalists know their own state’s public records laws best. This database provides the names and mailing addresses of all the state and local law enforcement agencies in any geographic area in the United States.

Eventually, I’ll have another database of boilerplate record requests, but in the meantime, the National Freedom of Information Coalition has sample public records requests here.

This database is available to anyone for any use. It’s from a public document, although I don’t think this information was freely available until this database was created. In exchange for its use, particularly if it’s being used to make public records requests regarding fatal encounters with police, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me in the comment box below or email me at [email protected], telling me what agencies you’ve made requests of (county and state) and, when a response is received, a copy of the results so the information on the incident database can be updated or verified.